1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the art of refrigerators and, more particularly, to a refrigerator door that is reinforced by a cross-brace assembly.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
As is widely known, a refrigerator includes a cabinet portion and a door, both of which are generally made from sheet metal for economical reasons. The door is pivotally mounted to the cabinet through a hinge arrangement in order to provide access to the food storage space of the refrigerator. In addition, a seal is attached about an inner periphery of the door to create a seal with the cabinet when the door is closed.
In order to provide enhanced storage space within refrigerators, it has become common practice to form a refrigerator door with a liner that defines various shelves or other storage areas upon which additional food items can be supported. The increased weight of the door due to these food items can result in an undesirable mount of twisting of the door. Such twisting occurs on the handle side of the door, i.e., on an opposite side to the hinge arrangement. If the mount of twisting becomes too great, the seal will break away from the cabinet and an air leak will occur.
To minimize or prevent such twisting from occurring, it has heretofore been proposed to reinforce the door with one or more braces. If the door is molded of plastic, a brace arrangement in the form of ribs provided on the back of a front panel portion of the door can be readily provided (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,708,294). However, for mainly economical reasons, substantially all refrigerator doors on the market are formed from sheet metal that is bent to define return flanges to which is attached the door liner. It has also been proposed to secure braces to these return flanges in order to address the above-described twisting problem. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,612,661 and 4,747,245 disclose exemplary bracing arrangements of this type wherein a pair of diagonally arranged and intersecting cross braces are secured directly to return flanges or brackets attached to the return flanges. Generally after the cross braces are secured and the liner is attached, the door is insulated by injecting foam therein as clearly disclosed in these patents.
Securing cross braces in this manner adds undesirable costs to the manufacture of the refrigerator and can also be quite time consuming. As discussed in each of the '661 and '245 patents, holes formed in the cross braces must be aligned with holes formed directly in the return flanges or a bracket secured thereto and then mechanical fasteners are used to interconnect the braces to the door. Obviously, considerable time is required to align these components and then to manually secure the fasteners which unduly adds cost to the overall manufacturing process. Of course, since these components are made from metal, they could also be welded together but this would also represent cost increases.
Therefore, there exists a need in the art to provide an improved reinforced refrigerator door assembly which avoids the twisting problems discussed above but which also is easy to assemble and cost effective.